Git quick reference for beginners

There are many good resources for learning Git. (Here's an excellent online book, and this is my videos series introducing Git and GitHub.) But once you've learned the basics, it can be hard to remember which commands to use to execute the most common tasks.

I went searching for a Git reference guide that would be useful for beginners like myself, but didn't find anything ideal:

Git - the simple guide is useful as a high-level overview of the basic commands, but doesn't provide enough details.

Git Cheatsheet uses a nice interactive approach to summarize a ton of git commands on one screen, but it doesn't give you any sense of workflow.

Git Reference is close to what I was looking for, and links each entry to the relevant section of Pro Git (awesome!), but is too long for a quick reference.

So, I decided to make my own reference guide!

The guide below is organized by task, with an emphasis on basic tasks and common command line arguments. It begins with the workflow for cloning, updating, and syncing with a remote repo because that's a common way to get started with Git and GitHub.

Note that this is only a reference guide, and will not teach you Git. It does not explain the difference between staged and committed, what to do with a .gitignore file, or when to create a branch. But if you are already familiar with those concepts, this guide will hopefully refresh your memory and help you to discover other commands you might need.

Please enjoy, and let me know your thoughts or questions in the comments!

Looking for a good reference guide for Git commands? I wrote one specifically for Git novices: http://t.co/UTsLPen5cK